Carnival 2014 acrobat flights over St. Mark's Square

The Angel's Flight and the Eagle's Flight are the most important and exciting moments of the Carnival of Venice. The two events attract tens of thousands of visitors to the Gran Teatro at Piazza San Marco in the final two Sundays of the Carnival.

The Angel's Flight and the Eagle's Flight are the two aerobatic flights that take place in the final two Sundays of the Carnival. The Angel ( Maria winner of the Carnival of the previous year ) and the Eagle (usually a character of the show or an athlete) descend , attached to a cable, the bell tower of San Marco down to the Grand Theatre, respectively, the second and the last Sunday of Carnival.

The particular flight of the angel marks the beginning of the last ten days of festivities and is followed on the ground by tens of thousands of spectators and cameras from all over the world.
Even though they are in total safety, the Flight is a particularly exciting time because of the tower height and the strong wind blowing from the sea.

The flights have ancient origins, in fact reproduce the performance of a tightrope that went down, walking along a rope from the bell tower down to a boat anchored in the basin of San Marco. Later, probably due to falls, he was replaced by a wooden dove. In 2001 it was partially returned to its origins with the flight made ​​by a person.
 
It has recently been introduced on the afternoon of Shrove Tuesday, "the Svolo of Leon", a large cloth with the image of St. Mark - the lion, in fact - that is hoisted from the Grand Theatre at Campanile , to represent the conclusion of the Carnival.